From 1910 to 1930, the city’s population nearly doubled from 45,401 to 85,828. Fueling that growth was the birth of Camp Grant, one of the nation’s largest military induction training centers.

The size and scope of the base, a virtual city unto itself, would be a boon for any city’s economy. But it was the efforts of Rockford’s city leaders and the Rockford Chamber of Commerce who lobbied hard for federal government officials to place the center in northern Illinois.

A June 15, 1917, headline by the Rockford Morning Star deemed Camp Grant as a “New Era of Expansion for Rockford.”

“People think about the airport being the location of Camp Grant. That’s actually just a very small part of it,” Midway Village Museum President David Byrnes said. “It stretched out over to where Alpine Road is today. It was massive. There were 200 miles of roads in this thing.”

Friday marked the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I on Aug. 1, 1914. But it was nearly three years into the war before the U.S. declared war April 6, 1917, on Germany making an induction center like Camp Grant a necessity.

Five months after the war declaration, Camp Grant received its first draftees.

From the labors who built the sprawling 5,460-acre base to the 40,000 to 50,000 GIs who occupied it at any given time, Camp Grant pumped millions of dollars into the local economy.

Byrnes said, “Think about it. You’ve got all these soldiers. They get government pay, and they’ve got nothing to do but burn it.”

It wasn’t long before downtown Rockford was bustling with movie theaters, barber shops, restaurants and bars.

African-American soldiers, who were prohibited from patronizing many white establishments, also sought entertainment and relaxation away from the base and formed the Booker Washington Association, a predecessor to the Booker Washington Community Center.

The war’s death toll on Rockford was most likely as high as any other city its size, but Byrnes also said few American cities thrived more from World War I than Rockford.

“There was some national expert who said, ‘For a city it’s size, Rockford was probably the most prosperous community in the 19-teens,’ Byrnes said. Because everybody was working. Credit was great. We were building buildings. We were doing all kinds of stuff.”

While the Forest City was already known for it furniture making, Byrnes said Camp Grant elevated the city’s status around the country.

Page 2 of 2 - “I think it probably raised people’s awareness about what Rockford does as far manufacturing is concerned, and we probably built a lot of ties with other manufacturers.”

Today, the Chicago Rockford International Airport occupies former Camp Grant land. Much of the remaining camp land was purchased by Seth B. Atwood in the 1950s, who would later donate the former Camp Grant rifle range to the Rockford Park District, which would name it the Seth Atwood Park in his honor.